


aviophobia.

by CallicoKitten



Series: whatever our souls are made of [2]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Character Study, Daemons, M/M, Other, Phobias, Pre-Canon, Q is badass, and has a weird background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 07:21:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about flying is the phenomenal amount of things that can go wrong.</p><p>And yes, he is well aware of the statistics thank you very much, but that doesn’t change anything. There is just so much that can go wrong ranging from mechanical failure to human error and then there’s the whole issue of just how fatal crashes tend to be.</p><p>The thing is he knows it’s irrational.</p><p>He knows it’s statistically more likely that he’ll be hit by a car, or stabbed, or commit suicide or something so it’d make more sense to be afraid of cars, which he isn’t (unless driven by Bond because he’s fairly sure double-oh-seven is trying to get himself killed sometimes). He knows this and yet it doesn’t seem to matter.</p><p>Which is precisely why it’s so terrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aviophobia.

**Author's Note:**

> Not as well thought out as gruff old dog but HERE HAVE IT ANYWAY.
> 
> I've basically puked my aviophobia all over Q and given him a ridiculous background story to boot.
> 
> Q's daemon name is pronounced Day-hee.
> 
> Maybe I'll do Eve next.
> 
> ANYWAY. Thanks a bunch for all your awesome comments on my other fic, hope you like this one too!
> 
> Oh, and Q's name is boring because I couldn't think of a better one (and my house mate was watching White Collar)

P>He's seven years old and he's running.

He's seven years old and he's running, arms outstretched like a plane, eyes squeezed shut. He can hear the frantic beating of his heart, rabbit-fast, he's trying to come up with a method to slow it (breathe in, breathe out). It hasn't worked out so far.

There's shouting from behind him, jeering, screaming, the occasional rock (when did they even have time to pick those up?)

Dahy is as high as he can be above him, "Left!" he caws, kestrel formed.

He swerves left round a corner, eyes still shut. "Shit, shit, shit," Dahy swears.

He opens his eyes and he's facing a high metal gate, his daemon flutters down beside him. "Way to go idiot," he mutters.

His daemon lands on the floor beside him and flickers into a dinosaur. _Deinonychus antirrhopus_ to be exact (he's going through a phase) the shouts get louder and he turns, the boys from his school are almost upon him.

"You should have run faster," Dahy says, stretching his neck and clicking his claws.

" _You_ should have been a better navigator!"

Dahy chuckles, "There are only five of them. We can take them."

* * *

The thing about flying is the phenomenal amount of things that can go wrong.

And yes, he is well aware of the statistics thank you very much, but that doesn't change anything. There is just _so much_ that can go wrong ranging from mechanical failure to human error and then there's the whole issue of just how fatal crashes tend to be.

The thing is he knows it's irrational.

He knows it's statistically more likely that he'll be hit by a car, or stabbed, or commit suicide or something so it'd make more sense to be afraid of cars, which he isn't (unless driven by Bond because he's fairly sure double-oh-seven is _trying_ to get himself killed sometimes). He knows this and yet it doesn't seem to matter.

Which is precisely why it's so terrifying.

Because it's _illogical._

And nothing about him is illogical.

* * *

His mother leaves when he's nine years old.

He comes home from school to find his step-father in the kitchen, head in his hands. His mongrel daemon is under the table, head on her paws whining quietly.

"Where is she?"

Daniel looks up, "Gone."

"Oh."

He thinks he should probably miss her but the truth is she's never really been around, he sees Daniel more often than sees her. He's not even sure if he can remember the last time he spoke to her. He scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand (his left eye is swelling up handsomely, they got him at lunch) "She won't be back?" he asks quietly.

Daniel sniffs. "No." Then he looks up, adds as an afterthought: "You okay?"

Dahy flickers into the shape of a wild cat, winds himself around his legs. He takes a shuddering breath, "Yeah, fine."

* * *

After that they're more or less left to their own devices (which is definitely how they like it.)

He leaves school when he's fourteen. It's not like he's learning anything there anyway. ("Except how ridiculous the majority of humanity are," Dahy adds.) Yes. Except that.

He spends his time writing programs and algorithms for shady corporations that are just this side of legal (and a few that aren't) He doesn't ask about what they want them for, doesn't reveal his real name, his locations (they might be able to work it out but if they have they're keeping quiet) He makes more money in a year than most people do in their entire lives and hides it away in a multitude of bank accounts in a multitude of different names.

"Show off," Dahy mutters.

Daniel never asks where he gets the money to buy the latest computer software or why he never goes to school anymore, so he repays the favour of keeping the flat clean and the fridge well stocked.

It works for a while.

* * *

He thinks that maybe it's because he's never done it that it's so terrifying.

It's unknown. It's _other_.

But then again he's never rode an elephant or even a horse for that matter and he doesn't have messy (embarrassing) panic attacks if the thought of doing _that_ crosses his mind. Not that he's too keen on horses. Or elephants for that matter. Don't get him wrong, he thinks they're wonderful to observe from a distance but the idea of _riding_ one? Not exactly thrilling.

He'd much prefer a bike. Or a car.

Or a long distance type of thing really.

When he's behind a screen he's safe, he's in control.

And therein lies the problem: control.

He can't control the plane or the pilot or the weather or the other passengers (and gods, he wishes he could) so by extension he wouldn't be in control of himself on a plane.

He'd be totally helpless.

(And there are the whole fiery, fiery death scenarios that flash through his mind whenever he sees a plane fly overhead)

* * *

He leaves Daniel's flat when he's sixteen.

Dahy has finally settled as a delicate little jungle cat, _Leopardus tigrinus_ , an oncilla. It suits him beautiful, cool and sneaky and deceptively small. Dahy is endlessly proud and spends a lot of his time preening himself (or at least _pretending_ to preen himself). They've made, quite literally, millions and it's time to _spread their wings,_ as it were.

They've been working with (for) shadier people (they pay so much better) but he's not so blind that he doesn't see the risks. If anyone ever found out who he was Daniel would be at risk and though he's loathe to admit it the man is the closest thing he has to family. If he leaves Daniel will be safer, marginally anyway.

He waits in the kitchen, like Daniel did all those years ago, duffel bag on the floor beside him, laptop in a rucksack on his back. He's already bought a sleek little loft apartment in Kensington (under a false name, of course) and worked out every little detail of his background story (or his most current one anyway)

When Daniel returns he seems to already know. Lionah, his daemon, slinks in behind him and in a rare affectionate gesture nuzzles Dahy; they both shudder at the sudden warmth.

Maybe they're doing the wrong thing.

Maybe they should stay.

Dahy bristles at that thought, _we need to do this,_ he thinks.

Yes. Yes. They do.

He stands and picks up his suitcase, swallowing dryly. He should say something.

Daniel rescues him by pulling him in to a rough, awkward hug. "If you ever need anything, Neil," Daniel says quietly.

"Yeah," he mumbles back. "Yeah."

Daniel pulls back, pats him on the arm, "Look after yourself, kiddo." He smiles.

* * *

He tries flying once (because he rationalises that if he does it once, just _once_ he'll be okay)He's eighteen and Dahy is a soft comforting voice in his ear as they check in.

The panic sets in in the lobby.

There are just so many _people._ Loud. Loud. _Loud._

He sees the pilot (thinks he's the pilot anyway) there's a tremor in his hand (unsteady, yellow nails, smoker- could affect his job performance) and coffee stains on his shirt (dark bags under his eyes, sleep deprived- _definitely_ affects job performance)

And suddenly every plane crash image he's ever seen (real, fictional, imaginary) floods his senses. His breath hitches.

"Keep calm," Dahy whispers. "Think about something else."

He closes his eyes, buries one hand in Dahy's fur and recites the periodic table.

It doesn't work.

By the time they call for his flight to board he's on his knees in the bathroom shaking so badly he's not sure he can speak properly.

Dahy is nuzzling his cheek, "Its okay," he says softly. "It's alright."

"It's s-stupid," he mutters.

"Yeah," Dahy chuckles. "It is. But come on, we had to have _one_ flaw. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair on everyone else, right?"

 _Right,_ he thinks. Right.

* * *

He's twenty-four years old.

He earns so much money he doesn't know what to do with it anymore, he survives on a diet of earl gray and cinnamon biscuits, he has a whole room of computers and laptops and monitors in his flat, he's hacked in to NATO, MI5, the CIA and once, for kicks, the Bank of England (to name a few) and he hasn't changed out of his pyjamas in four days.

He changes his name, his address, his equipment every few months.

He's a ghost, he's a shadow, he's a nameless, faceless being.

Life is good.

"You're getting too cocky," Dahy remarks, watching him with cool amber eyes.

"I've earned the right to be cocky."

"Pride is a sin," his daemon says, jumping up on to the keyboard.

He shoves Dahy off, "Then I am a sinner."

"You'll get caught," Dahy sing-songs.

As usual, Dahy's right.

* * *

His luck runs out on a crisp autumn morning.

He's in a coffee shop, Dahy on his lap, tapping away on his laptop. To anyone else in the shop he'd look like nothing more than a young guy working happily (they aren't to know he's currently writing a decoy programme to help him hack in to NATO undetected again) He doesn't particularly want to be there but Dahy insisted ("We don't want to add agoraphobia to your rapidly growing list.")

He looks up when the girl slides in to the seat opposite him, pushing a mug towards him. The shop is empty but for the two of them, there's really no reason for her to be here and she's got his order right exactly, she definitely wasn't there to hear him give it. Her daemon is perched unassumingly on her shoulder, blue-black body, rust coloured wings. A tarantula hawk.

_Interesting._

"Careful," Dahy rumbles from his position on his lap. "Could be a trap."

He runs a thumb over his daemon's ear, _I know._

"Thought you could use a top up," the girl says smiling coyly. She brushes her hair back when he smiles, like she's tidying herself up for him, her body language screams _flirting_. She's acting of course (he can tell by the way her eyes keep darting to the laptop.)

"Thanks," he says, snapping the laptop shut.

She sits back a little, "Your daemon's pretty." She says brightly.

Dahy looks up at her, jumps up to sit on the table, tail swishing lazily, still on guard. "So is yours," he replies.

She giggles, winds one of her dark curls around her index finger. It's absurdly childish but he thinks any lesser man would be suitably distracted by now. "Looks can be deceiving." She says and drops the act, just like that.

"And cats have claws." He replies, sits forward, clasps his hands together on the table top. Dahy growls low in his throat.

She laughs again, a chuckle this time, dark and thrilling.

"Who do you work for?" he asks, pulling up a mental list of people he might have pissed off lately.

"Oh, sweetie," the girl says dismissively. "You know it's not going to be that easy."

"Careful," Dahy murmers again.

He sits back expectantly. Her daemon takes off and lands on her hand, she strokes his wings delicately. "You know," she says conversationally. "The female tarantula hawk kidnaps spiders and drags them back to their nests to lay their eggs on them. When the larva hatches it burrows its way inside the spider and eats it from the inside out avoiding its organs for as long as possible to keep it alive. Can you imagine that? Being eaten alive?"

It'll take more than that to make him quail, he thinks. "Guess I'm lucky your daemons a male then."

She smirks. "Oh, really?" Her daemon takes off again, buzzes around Dahy's head. "So, Noah," she says.

 _Good,_ he thinks, she doesn't know his real name. This month he's Noah Gleason, twenty-four, recently graduated with a first in computer science. Dahy's name is Bodhi.

"Why don't you tell me who you _think_ I work for?"

He looks her over. She's well dressed but not too flashy; she's too relaxed to be working for one of the messier (criminal) organisations he's worked for but too intelligent to be working for the police. She could be working for the Irish man with the sniper bodyguard or the ex-CIA agent who's working to bring down the US with a few clicks of his mouse. But he hasn't (too his knowledge anyway) crossed either of them and they could very easily contact him online.

She could be someone new.

Someone new and dangerous.

Or... _Ah_. Got it.

She grins, "Stumped are we?"

He scoffs, "Hardly. Are you here to arrest me agent?"

She smiles prettily, the kind of smile he imagines she might give to someone she's about to kill. "You don't disappoint."

"This is a public place so you won't want to use force and I'm not going anywhere," he grins, reaches for a victory sip.

She looks almost disappointed when she whispers, "Gotcha."

Bugger. Wrong cup.

Fear, like all other emotions (if fear _counts_ asan emotion) is caused by series of chemical reactions and hormone secretion in the brain.

It's pure science.

Pure, ridiculous science.

That's all it is. Chemicals and hormones and absurdity.

* * *

He wakes up in a brightly lit white room, cuffed to a chair. Dahy is on his lap again (claws digging deep) "Way to go moron," his daemon mutters stuffily.

"Fuck you," he murmers back, wading through the chemical fog in his brain. His senses have been dulled and he's blinking heavily. "This is bad, isn't it?"

Dahy leans against him. "Well, you're in government custody and no one knows you're here. Oh and there's the never ending list of felonies to your name so yeah, I'd say this is pretty bad."

"Great." He murmers.

Goes back to sleep.

* * *

When he wakes up again there's a woman sat opposite him. She's old and severe and has the kind of beauty one attributes to venomous snakes and big cats. He doesn't bother looking around for her daemon, she's definitely too important to have it him hanging around.

"Good morning," she says icily. "Sleep well?"

He coughs. "Fabulously. Where am I?"

"Vauxhall Cross."

"MI6. Brilliant. Haven't you got better things to do than kidnapping helpless graduates?"

She smiles, "Yes, kidnapping cyber-terrorists." She opens the file on the table between them. "Do you mind if I call you Neil?"

(He flinches slightly; he hasn't been Neil for a very long time)

"Or do you prefer Jack Kilby? Or Thomas Quinn? Or Joseph Jacquard?"

"Neil is fine," he mutters.

"Don't mutter, boy. It's very irritating."

He glares at her like a sullen teenager. She stares back unamused.

"Why am I here?" he asks.

She quirks an eyebrow, glancing down at the thick folder in front of her. "Would you like to see a list?"

"No. Why am I _here_?" he repeats. "If you want information you'll have to-" but he catches her look and _oh_ , wonderful. "You need my help." He says flatly.

She sighs, "Unfortunately, yes. We'd like to offer you a job."

He eyes the cuffs that still hold him. "Do I have a choice?"

"Yes, you can choose to accept our most gracious offer of employment or you can spend the rest of your life in prison. After being tortured for information of course," she smiles again and he can tell she's not joking.

"Well it is a difficult decision, but I think I'll accept your job offer. Torture wouldn't look good on us."

"A wise decision," she says, standing. "Welcome to MI6, agent."

* * *

They vet him and grill him and test him and give him an approved back story and lots and lots of very fancy new toys. They put him in Q branch as the Quartermasters assistant.

"It is protocol for agents to undergo separation sir-"

He cuts the agent off, "No."

"But-"

" _No_."

* * *

He meets Eve again two weeks after he becomes an agent. She swaggers in to the office and deposits herself on to his desk, handing him a mug of earl gray.

"No drugs this time," she says when he raises an eyebrow. "I promise."

"And I should believe you because...?"

She smiles dazzlingly and her daemon lands on Dahy's head. "I have an honest face." She says.

"You're a spy," he chuckles. "You can have whatever 'face' you like."

"True. Guess you'll just have to trust me."

He takes a sip. "What's your name?"

"Eve."

"Really?"

She laughs. "Maybe. What's yours?"

"Neil."

"Really?"

He smirks, "Maybe."

* * *

He becomes the new Q a few months after he joins MI6; he revamps everything, invents cleverer and deadlier weapons and gets drunk with Eve every few weeks (when she's not on active duty anyway)

"So," she asks one evening, pretending to be far less drunk than she really is. "Are your parents dead?"

He's learnt that almost everyone who works at MI6 is an orphan or close to one. Q thinks about Daniel sometimes, keeps close tabs on him. "Haven't the foggiest. Never knew my father and my mother left when I was nine. You?"

"Oh yes, it was very sad." She remarks.

* * *

"I was expecting something _bigger_ ," Dahy mutters as they leave the National Gallery.

"Hm? His daemon, you mean?" Q says.

His daemon nods, "Like double-oh-nine's crocodile or double-oh-six's tiger."

"I think she suits him. Gruff, old, loyal."

"She's a _dog_ ," Dahy says scathingly and Q chuckles.

"Well we can't all be as flawless as you."

* * *

"I have to fly to China because you're scared of flying," Eve glowers at him and he gives her his best smile. "And don't think you're getting away with this because you're cute." She adds.

"Ah. Damn. Drinks on me when you get back then?"

She considers this for a few minutes. "I suppose that's a start." She sprawls across his desk and watches her daemon zip around Dahy in lazy circles. "I quite like flying."

"I've never done it," he admits quietly. "I think that might be the problem."

"You think too much," she says fondly.

"It's my job." He replies.

* * *

The thing he likes about James Bond, literally the only thing, is the fact that he's not surprised when Q bites back and grips hard enough to bruise.

"Yeah," Dahy smirks. " _That's_ what you like about him."


End file.
